


Four Words

by Xifeng



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-08
Updated: 2015-08-08
Packaged: 2018-04-13 14:57:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4526448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Xifeng/pseuds/Xifeng
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the Fen of Serech, after the War of Wrath, it always comes down to the same four words.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Four Words

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this a year and a half ago and never posted it.... warning for major tone shift between the two parts?

 

"They're all dead, father."

 

He's come upon them unawares, ten days after they saw him last. The sentries allowed his small company to enter the camp unchallenged, and while his bannermen have melted away to join the body of the Fëanorian host Tyelkormo has made his way to the northernmost point where his father and brothers have their tents. He appears at the edge of their circle, a mixture of gold and red in the reflected flames of the camp fire and the blood of slain orcs splashed in bright patterns across his head and armour and covering his right arm from wrist to shoulder. He's limping a little as he comes closer, favouring his left leg with each step, but he's smiling, exultant in victory.

 

He's greeted by cries of delight from his father and brothers, Fëanáro straightening up from the map he's been sketching out with Curufinwë by the fire's edge and turning towards his third son, fierce pride and relief warring on his face. "You cut through safely, then. And you slew them all? No survivors?"

 

"Killed all of them, I think. Maybe a few managed to join that rabble heading north; we'll catch them soon enough. No losses amongst my men. This is easier than I thought," Tyelkormo adds, laughing and reaching out towards Maitimo as his oldest brother takes a step towards him.

 

"I thought you were--"

  
Maitimo doesn't get a chance to say whatever it was he thought, however, as a dark shape shoulders him roughly aside and pushes forward until Tyelkormo finds himself nose to nose with Carnistir, his little brother's strange dark eyes locked unblinkingly on his face. Neither of them move for a long moment... and then Carnistir's arms flash out and he pulls his brother into a crushing embrace that Tyelkormo can feel even despite his armour. "--Ack, Moryo, I'm covered in... you know you're going to stink like an orc until you burn those clothes now."

 

"He was worried about you; let him have this," Fëanáro chides gently, joining Maitimo as they make their way over to the two brothers and stretching out his hand to touch Tyelkormo's side as though to reassure himself that his son is here, alive and unhurt. "He wasn’t the only one... how large was the host? Did you see any others of the enemy’s creatures, or just the orcs? We've heard reports of wolves in the northern flanks."

 

"About three hundred," Tyelkormo's voice is indistinct as he peels off one of his gloves with his teeth, grimacing at the taste, and then using his more-or-less clean hand to stroke Carnistir's hair until his brother makes a low sound and shrinks away like a cat that doesn't want to be petted, backing off until he's just outside the range of Tyelkormo's reach. "Can you take my gloves, Nelyo - careful, they're foul - I've got to get out of this armour. Nothing but orcs as far as I could see, each one uglier than the last. Even uglier by the time we were done with them, though."

 

"Hold on, you've got--" Maitimo says with a mixture of amusement and disgust, reaching over to peel a wet patch of gore from Tyelkormo's shoulder with his fingertips, "--an ear on you."

 

"Not mine, I hope," Tyelkormo laughs and reaches up to touch the side of his head, his pale braids stained and heavy with drying blood. "One of the big ones got a good hit in yesterday; I've been hearing nothing but bells chiming since."

 

"Ai!" Fëanáro cuffs his son lightly about the head and turns away, striding a few paces as though he can't bear to keep still even now. "You can hear us well enough; I'll wager there's no lasting damage. And your face is still pretty, which we all know is what you're most concerned about, mm?" Even as he speaks, his eyes look northward to where the smoke from Angband blots out the stars.

 

"You hear that?" Tyelkormo complains, turning to Carnistir with his best attempt at a hurt look, "I think he's calling me vain, Moryo."

 

Carnistir only responds with raised eyebrows, his store of emotional outbursts evidently drained for the time being, but Makalaurë laughs and glances over from where he's applying salve to a wound on Ambarussa's forehead and raises his voice to be heard. "You? Surely _not_ , Tyelko. Though I do recall all the girls calling you 'Tyelkormo the fair' back in Valinor."

 

"And _I_ remember you suggesting the name to them in the first place," is Curufinwë's only contribution, quickly rising to his feet and following after their father as Fëanáro picks his way up the rocky path to the bluff overhead: they'll be moving soon, chasing after the remnants of the orc-host as they retreat towards Dor Daedeloth, and Fëanáro most likely wants a view of the lay of the land ahead. Curufinwë flits after him without a word, only acknowledged by Maitimo shooting him a look that might be resigned annoyance as he leaves.

 

'I don't know about you," Tyelkormo continues just as if he hadn't heard anything, addressing his remaining brothers with a grin as he absently picks flakes of blood from his face, "but I hope we move out soon: I'm ready to kill some more filth. I have a good feeling about tomorrow."

 

\---

 

\---

 

It's so quiet, now that it's all over.

 

Maglor doesn't quite know where he is, but he doesn't suppose it really matters. All places are alike, after the end of the world. He's sprawled on his side, sand clingling to his cheek and the surf lapping at his heels, staring at his hands splayed out on the beach in front of him. What used to be his hands. They're red, white, flesh melted apart and fused together and burning, still burning. He'll never play the harp again.

 

He can understand why Maedhros jumped.

 

His fingers twitch, and the blood boils beneath his skin. _'Is this how the twins felt? Is this how it feels to burn alive?'_

 

He closes his eyes and shivers: the fire in his hands feels detached from the gnawing chill in his body, and the Silmaril that he claimed lies somewhere at the bottom of the sea now foaming around his calves. Neither can warm him now.

 

And yet still he burns.

 

Ambarussa... the first one, the one who never had a chance for a new name - Amras, the Sindar write in their histories, though Maglor never knew him by that name and still cannot quite fit it to the boy he remembers - Ambarussa burned too. Maglor had stood on the beach with his father and brothers and wept when they realised what they had done; had watched his father rage and the other twin, the one who shared the same name as the burning one, transform into a screaming, cursing creature that thrashed and bit and took Maglor and two other brothers to restrain as he fought to fling himself into the sea, to swim out to the swan-ship that was already nothing but a blazing husk on the water. Already they had known that Ambarussa couldn't be saved.

 

Doriath took Celegorm and Caranthir and Curufin, or rather Celegorm's wrath and injured pride doomed himself and took his brothers with him. Maglor never saw their bodies – he had been searching the forest with Maedhros when the news came - but he's heard the whispers over the years and he can picture the three of them as clearly as if he'd stood in Dior's throne room and witnessed it himself: Caranthir dragging Curufin through the thousand caves of the underground palace, the latter shot through with arrows and dying or dead, hard to say. He'd found Celegorm slumped lifeless over Dior in front of the throne, the bodies of Dior's guards scattered around him. They say Caranthir pulled Celegorm free, laid him beside Curufin and placed himself in front of his brothers' bodies as the next wave of defenders flooded into the chamber from every corridor. It had made no difference in the end.

 

Unbidden Maglor's hands try to clench into fists: the sudden searing pain makes him cry out and then retch, though he still lacks the strength to lift his head, much less move any further. The waves are at his waist.

 

They say the surviving Elves of Doriath hung the bodies of his brothers from trees at the entrance to Menegroth before they fled for the Havens: _see here the sons of Fëanor, the accursed Kinslayers. Know that they suffer and die just as we do._ Even if it was nothing but an ugly rumour, Maglor thinks that image helped him agree to the attack on Sirion, reluctant and weary and sick of the Oath as they had all been by then, chasing futilely after it for so many years. Himself and Maedhros and Amrod.

 

Amrod had burned too.

 

The next wave hits and suddenly there's saltwater in his mouth and he's choking, saltwater in his eyes and he can't see, his _hands_ are underwater and for a second he blacks out until the screaming in his exposed nerves and tendons brings him thumping back down into his body, jerking as his muscles clench and rolling gracelessly onto his back as he coughs out salt-flavoured foam and bile. Part of him wonders if he's dying now too; another part sees the Havens of Sirion.

 

The people at Sirion had not been warriors - by then almost all the warriors were dead. The people at Sirion had been stonecarvers from Gondolin, blacksmiths from Nargothrond, hunters from Doriath, women and children and those who had only ever known life on the run. Amrod hadn't been killed by a skilled fighter, just some nameless refugee with a lighted torch and a lucky shot: Maglor remembers hearing a scream and turning to see his youngest brother's long hair on fire, too far away for him to reach across the melee filling the town square. Then the flames had spread to his cloak, his body, and Amrod had burned.

 

He's expecting the next wave when it comes, even tries to sit up, but his body refuses and he only has time to snatch a breath before he's underwater again. He clenches his teeth against the shriek that wants to escape as his hands are submerged, fingers hooking into agonised claws and this time, this time he wants to die, to have it all over with and be _done._ Even the Everlasting Darkness can't be as bad as the pain in his hands right now.

 

Maedhros had wanted to die.

 

Maglor had suspected for some time that that was the case, at the very least since Fingon had been slain and then gradually more and more each year as despair had mounted, defeat piled on defeat and loss upon loss. It was the reason he argued so vehemently for leaving the Silmarils to the Valar, as the earth heaved around them and the mountains to the north belched fire and smoke as Angband was levelled, as the realms of Elves and Men had slipped into the sea. _Let us leave the Silmarils behind us, and find such peace as we yet may._ But by that time Maedhros had already had that achingly hollow look in his eyes as he refused to be swayed, and now Maglor thinks his brother knew exactly how it was all going to play out.

 

Just as Maglor knows now.

 

Ambarussa, Curufin, Celegorm, Caranthir, Amrod, Maedhros, Maglor. The order irks him, somehow, leaving him last on the list like a coward trailing behind his brothers only because he can think of no other option but to follow them. To lie here and drown in three feet of seawater. To give up.

 

Maedhros gave up.

 

It's that last thought that makes him move, even before he's aware of it: the muscles in his stomach clench and he's sitting up and the water is even shallower than he thought, the wave already receding back into the ocean. Perhaps the same wave flowed around the Silmaril as it fell, he thinks, and it's that thought that gets him moving, dragging himself painfully higher up the beach using his upper arms before he regains the strength to crawl. Another Age seems to come and go before he clears the high-tide line and collapses onto his back, drawing breath after shuddering breath with his burning hands cradled protectively against his chest. The stars are bright over his head; they seem to whirl and splash across the sky as he reels and he tastes salt in his mouth, though whether it is from the sea or his own tears fresh upon his face he doesn't know. All he knows is that for the first time in his life, he's terribly alone.

 

"They're all dead, father."


End file.
